Suddenly we all need to know about Critical Literacy. These pages seek to provide an answer.

Critical Literacy.

What's All That About?

Introduction

Welcome to the age of criticising everything. Bagging things out, pointed barbs, saying things are rubbish is fashionable. Has been so ever since World War I showed the world that the powers that be didn't necessarily know what they were doing. World War I undermined the "order" so beloved in Shakespeare's plays, and the literature that followed. World War II confirmed it, and thus the intellectual activity after these wars was to examine everything in the light of criticism.

Now this belief that criticism helps humanity understand its world (or, indeed, realise just how incomprehensible it is) has been accepted as an integral part of modern society. We see it now, embodied in the new English syllabi. So, we as teachers and students now look at the past and undermine everything. Thus, "critical literacy".

Of course, this doesn't mean that we have to hate everything, just see a text from all angles, even negative ones. If a text still stands up as being relevant to todays society and humanity, then it is revealed as a great text, worthy of further analysis. If it is irrelevant, then it is suitable for our leisure, our afternoons, our weekends.